Hater

How to spell hater

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce hater

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does hater mean?

1. nounA person who feels or expresses intense dislike toward someone or something.
2. nounInformally, a person who belittles another's success out of jealousy.

Hater in a sentence

• The columnist described the troll as a bitter hater of anything popular.

• She ignored every online hater and kept posting her cooking videos.

• Every public figure attracts the occasional hater who criticises everything they do.

• He laughed off the comments, saying a hater would never cheer for his promotion.

Where does hater come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a straightforward agent noun built on the verb 'hate', which descends from the Old English verb hatian, meaning to feel strong hostility or loathing toward someone or something. That verb traces back to a shared Germanic root, seen also in the Old Norse hata and the German hassen, all carrying the sense of bitter enmity. The agent suffix -er, likewise of native Germanic stock, was attached to mark the person who performs the action, giving 'one who hates'. The form has existed for centuries in its literal sense, but in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries it took on a fresh slang life, especially in hip-hop and online culture, to mean a person who voices envious negativity about another's success. The spelling is gentle: the silent 'e' of 'hate' is simply dropped before -er, so there is no doubling of the 't' and no awkward cluster to remember.

How the word is built

• hate (from Old English hatian: to feel strong dislike)
• -er (agent suffix: one who does)